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Michael Gallagher

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Posts tagged ‘cake’

Valentine’s Day. It’s usually a lover’s holiday, right? Well this year, both of our men are studying too hard to celebrate so we decided to have our own party. Chrissy and I are going to Enoteca Adriano again to celebrate something a bit different. This year it isn’t just about the men in our lives, it’s a celebration of all the things we love in life. Mainly great Italian food and neon pink mini cakes with Nutella filling…

This isn’t just any mini cake. It is a vanilla bean mini cake with a Nutella filling and topped with a pink vanilla cream cheese frosting. Try coming up with a recipe title for that…

First you’ll want to mash together the sugar and butter with a spoon — mashing it prevents too much mixing which makes dense cakes.

Beat in the other ingredients.

Spoon the mixture into your giant cupcake holders (found at your local cooking store) filling them half way and bake!

Once they are done you will use a pastry bag and tip to squeeze some Nutella into each one:

Do us a huge favor and don’t use a Ziploc bag like we did. This WILL happen:

Major blowout on the side of the bag. There was no rescuing these poor little cakes. Good thing we love Nutella.

Oh, and we didn’t learn from our lesson the first time and tried yet another baggy. The decorating tip proceeded to shoot out of the bag and into the center of a cake.

They should look more like this:

Moving on to the Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting. Try not to to eat it all before you top your mini cakes. This sounds like an easy thing to do but trust me on this one. You will need to hide it from your significant other, the kids, your mom, brother and the dog or it won’t last 5 minutes.

Check out those vanilla bean seeds! MmmMmMm.

Don’t forget to check out the other ingredient challengers for something RED! Ya, I know. Our’s ended up neon pink. Apparently adding more food coloring doesn’t constitute a more red hue.

How to make a vanilla bean mini cake with a Nutella filling and topped with a pink vanilla cream cheese frosting:

Cupcake Ingredients: Makes 12-18 gigantic cupcakes

1 cup flour

1 3/4 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup sugar

1 stick butter, softened

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

Nutella

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a medium bowl, combine flour and baking powder.

**Little Yellow Note: Remember that it’s always best to sift the dry ingredients, to ensure there are no clumps!

3. In a mixing bowl, combine sugar and butter together with a spoon. Beat in eggs, one at a time, mixing well. Add the vanilla.

4. Beat in the dry ingredients with the creamed butter mixture.

5. Add milk and mix in by hand (you do not want to over-beat the batter!)

6. Spoon into gigantic cupcake holders, filling them up halfway (these holders are free-standing and do not require a muffin pan).

7. Bake for 18-20 minutes, testing with a toothpick.

8. While still warm, pipe the Nutella into the center of the cupcake. Let cool.

Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:

**Little Yellow Note: we halved this recipe from the Cake Dutchess, and added a little extra cream cheese and substituted vanilla bean paste for vanilla extract.

¼ cup butter (1/2 stick), softened

6 oz of Philly cream cheese (3/4 of a package), softened

1-2 cups of powdered sugar

1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)

red food coloring (as much as needed)

colored sprinkles to top

Directions

1. Beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add in the vanilla bean paste, along with desired amount of powdered sugar (to taste) and drops of red food coloring and beat until desired sweetness and color is reached.
2. Top cupcakes with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting and lots of Valentine’s sprinkles!

The first thing I do when I get home each day is take off my uncomfortable work clothes, pull on my sweats and a T-shirt, and cook. But today was a tad different, Chrissy and I took a romantic relaxing walk down to the beach to check out the sunset. Being cooped up in an office all day really makes me crave sunshine. Check out this post-sunset pic…

Remember those grapefruits I told you about? Well I found something else really amazing to do with them, thanks to Smitten Kitchen! She has such creative recipes and her Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake really got a lot of attention today, we couldn’t resist trying it out with our own little twist on things.

You: “Oh no you did not put grapefruit inside cake!”

Us: “Oh yes. We did.”

Boy, oh boy is Chris going to enjoy this one.

Do you want to know how to make it? Do ya? Ok.

Collect the zest from 2 grapefruits and combine it with the sugar. This fantastic zesty sugar made me wonder what else I could make with it. Hm…any ideas?

Grapefruit juice and yogurt mixture

+ Zesty Sugar

=

Whisk in eggs and olive oil.

Now you must supreme a grapefruit. I just learned that this is the fancy name for peeling and dissecting a segmented fruit. The ultimate goal is to get rid of the chewy membrane and end up with 1/4 in. chunks of lush citrus.

Mix together the dry ingredients. Add Dry –> Wet. Then fold your supremed pieces of grapefruit into the batter.

Bake and serve!

This cake was just the right amount of sweet and sour when we topped it off with some powder sugar and grapefruit compote. I can’t wait for breakfast!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Grate zest from 2 grapefruits and place in a bowl with sugar. Using your fingers, rub ingredients together until zest is evenly distributed in sugar.

Supreme a grapefruit.

Halve remaining orange and squeeze juice into a measuring cup; you’ll will have about 1/4 cup. Add buttermilk or yogurt to juice until you have 2/3 cup liquid altogether. Pour mixture into bowl with sugar and whisk well. Whisk in eggs and olive oil.

Smitten Kitchen said to bake cake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until it is golden and a knife inserted into center comes out clean. Ours was in for 50 and was a little bit too brown around the edges. Cool on a rack for 5 minutes.